Saturday, August 22, 2015

Corbyn's transformative idea: People's Quantatitive Easing

What do Nick Clegg and Jeremy Corbyn have in common? Back in April 2010 on the pre-hustings ITV debate 'the personality of Nick Clegg became visible.....for 90 minutes last week he was seen as a political leader and as normal. The shock rocketed him and his party up the polls leaving Tory, Lib-Dem and Labour within a few points of each other.'

Five years later the Lib-Dems are wiped out and now in the summer of 2015 it is all about Jeremy Corbyn as potential Labour leader. He hasn't generated a huge Labour swing in the polls but has enlivened the political debate in a quite extraordinary way that seems to have surprised even him. But among the other potential leader candidates Corbyn, the complete outsider, has become the star. It took Nick Clegg 90 minutes to effect a change in the 2010 election that brought the 5 year coalition; it took Nigel Farage about 3 years to 2015 to build a great poll rating that ended in UKIP's one seat; just where will Jeremy Corbyn take politics now?

This pollshows that some of his core policies are favoured by the majority of voters by a wide margin: such as re-nationalisation of the utility and railway monopolies (3:1); minimum wage £10 /hr (3:1); 6o% tax for £150k earners (2:1); employee seats on FTSE100 boards (7:1). What about people's quantitative easing that Corbyn has espoused as promoted by economist Richard Murphy? Not an easy subject to poll about as even the Daily Telegraph and Bank of England governor Mark Carney are not altogether clear about what PQE might be as Murphy points out.

In PQE Mr Corbyn is getting to a solution for the economic difficulties that are facing the country. The conventional stated view is that austerity is the only way. JC has hit on a way to transform the economic outlook safely, sustainably and fairly. It is key to most of his economics-related policies. For an early clear advocacy of PQE see Anatole Kaletsky from August 2012 . For nearly two decades Prof Richard Werner has been campaigning about the now so-called 'PQE' since he originally coined the QE phrase in the 1990's and this link has him explaining what he meant by it.

This Free Lunch blog from 2013 has more on PQE and shows that even George Osborne understands a little more of its possibilities than Mark Carney does, it seems - so austerity may not be the only way for Chancellor Osborne. It wouldn't surprise me if he stole the PQE idea just as he did Labour's minimum wage idea at the last budget. But beware, a hopeful term may be twisted in use by politicians to leave us with current disfunctional economics. See these short videos by Richard Werner explaining how the money system and banking works and how it could be transformed.

Gradually the concept of QE / PQE is taking hold. Lord Adair Turner, Michael Kumhof and Philip Coggan are speaking on it at 'Making Money Work' in London on Monday 7th September 4-6pm. Book on the link, free admission, there are limited places.